WASHINGTON (AFP) - A gunman killed three people before police killed him in turn on Saturday in a shooting in a house in Aurora, Colorado, scene of a massacre in a cinema last year, local media reported.

NBC television's local affiliate Kusa reported that police had said that one survivor escaped from the house, where an "armed and dangerous" man had earlier barricaded himself inside with hostages.

Aurora made global headlines in July 2012 after a horrific shooting at a movie theatre that left 12 people dead and 58 others wounded during the first midnight screening of the latest Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises. On Saturday, several homes were evacuated and roads were closed for safety reasons before the gunman was shot by police, according to Kusa.

Earlier, while the siege was still ongoing, local police officer Sergeant Cassidee Carlson had told the station: "We've been able to contact him intermittently... We haven't been able to keep contact with him."

The Aurora cinema shooting revived America's perennial gun control debate, a dispute that only intensified last month when a gunman attacked a Connecticut elementary school and killed 20 young children and six staff members.